Where was 'Bandersnatch' filmed?

The latest episode of Charlie Brooker’s boundary-pushing series Black Mirror is an interactive choose-your-own-adventure film in which viewers are invited to make key decisions for the main character. Here we go through the looking glass to find out where the drama was actually shot

While its state-of-the-art technical envelope-pushing has dominated conversation, Bandersnatch is about more than that.

Netflix

Like all Black Mirror episodes, it’s as much about the past and present as the future, and the small details as the big concepts. Set in 1984, at heart it’s a retro-futurist period piece, and its use of locations is a key part of the time-twisting head-messing we’ve all been enjoying. Here, we visit the various destinations included.

The Sugden House was designed in 1955 as 'a simple house, an ordinary house' but also 'a radical house'

Croydon

For their brave old world, Charlie Brooker and co chose some of London’s finest modernist architecture, giving a starring role to the town of Croydon (pictured), the southern suburb of London that rejoices in a swarm of skyscrapers and concrete. Previously, this not-quite city’s best-known screen outings are for the drab housing block location of Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show and for the use of the now demolished Croydon Power Station as the torture block in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopian classic Brazil. Bandersnatch, in keeping with the fashionability of the brutalist aesthetic, is a little more reverent.

The 50p Building, Croydon

For the headquarters of software company Tuckersoft, they borrowed one of the area’s landmarks, No 1 Croydon (pictured). Formerly the NLA Tower and known as the 50p Building for its distinctive octagonal design, this 1970 construction by Richard Seifert featured in the credits of the ultimate suburban sitcom Terry and June, and looks no less odd now.

They installed Eighties-specific shopfronts for the WHSmith where he buys, depending on the viewer’s choice, his album by Tangerine Dream or Tomita, as well as the Wimpy opposite and branches of Chelsea Girl and Pizza Hut. Built in 1964, St George’s is still just about running as a mall, but was also employed in the 2016 film American Assassin as a bazaar in Istanbul.

Stefan’s bus ride – on a period Routemaster, of course – takes him along a road close to St George’s Walk. Just around the corner are some of Croydon’s best-known buildings, including 1962 concert venue Fairfield Halls, featured as a lecture hall in 2006’s The Da Vinci Code. Though it’s all the Sixties-throwback ambience that attracted Black Mirror to Croydon, the town’s days stranded in the past are numbered: led by the arrival of a hipster-friendly Boxpark food market (pictured) on George Street, the town is undergoing a wave of regeneration that will see the arrival of a Westfield shopping centre and the completion of London’s second-tallest building in the 748ft One Lansdowne Road.

Trellick Tower, West London

Bandersnatch also makes good use of other modernist landmarks elsewhere in the capital. For the apartment of games designer Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), they used West London’s Trellick Tower (pictured), inspiration for JG Ballard’s High Rise. Designed by Ernö Goldfinger and completed in 1972, it was regularly employed as a metaphor for urban alienation in a slew of Nineties films including Shopping and London Kills Me but is now a totem of local pride.

Finsbury Health Centre, Clerkenwell

The hospital where Stefan sees his counsellor is to the east at Finsbury Health Centre in Clerkenwell (pictured), renamed Saint Juniper’s Medical Practice (in reference to a past Black Mirror episode). Built in the 1930s by Berthold Lubetkin, with the distinctive glass bricks intended to promote a flow of light, its Grade I listing has meant it’s survived the attacks of fashion pretty much intact.

Hertfordshire

More recent but just as fascinating is the building used for Stefan’s home. In Watford, north of London, it’s called The Sugden House (pictured), and was designed on commission by architects Alison and Peter Smithson in 1955 as ‘a simple house, an ordinary house’ but also ‘a radical house’.

Considered ahead of its time to the point of postmodernism – from the flow of rooms inside to the arrangement of windows outside – it’s celebrated among the profession; according to Historic England, ‘The superficial simplicity of the exterior treatment belies the subtle nuances of the design.’

After the one-off Bandersnatch, Black Mirror returns for a full fifth season later in the year, doubtless carrying us to a variety of different times, atmospheres and, indeed, worlds. The last series travelled to the small Canadian town of Hamilton for the Jodie Foster-directed 'Arkangel', to Lanzarote for the alien planet of USS Callister and Almeria for the desert setting of 'Black Museum', and to Iceland’s Kleifarvatn Lake and Reykjavik town centre for 'Crocodile'. After the success of Bandersnatch, the world must be their oyster.